paul stanley
PAUL STANLEY Says KISS Had No Other Choice Than To Go Unmasked
According to The Pulse Of Radio, Paul Stanley feels that KISS had no other option than to go "unmasked" in 1983 with the release of their "Lick It Up" album. Stanley, who will be inducted along with KISS into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame next month, has come under attack along with Gene Simmons for deciding that no lineup of KISS would be performing at the celebrations — in essence robbing fans of one last time to see the band's founders, including Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, play together.
Over 30 years ago, on September 18, 1983, KISS — then featuring guitarist Vinnie Vincent and drummer Eric Carr — unveiled themselves without makeup for the first time live on MTV. Paul Stanley told Guitar World that it had come to a point where KISS needed to make a drastic change, recalling, "I didn’t see any other choice at that point. And I take my hat off to Gene that, although he was uncertain about it and maybe less comfortable with it, he came to realize that it was the right move. Or at least he saw that I was very committed to the idea."
Stanley went on to say, "I felt that we had diluted everything the band was to the point where it was becoming a farce. What happened was, we kicked Peter out of the band — 'we' meaning Ace, Gene and myself. But rather than saying, 'We’ve built these iconic figures together and we’re going to continue on with what we built,' we bought into the idea of, 'We have to have a new character.' That watered it down. Some people may argue with me, but I feel that Batman is Batman whether he’s played by George Clooney, Christian Bale, Val Kilmer and on and on."
When asked about KISS finally getting inducted and being arguably the most successful band to be passed over year after year by the Hall, Stanley said: "To ignore somebody with the kind of fervor that we’ve been ignored, that’s clearly a conscious decision. For better or worse, that’s not being ignored at all. When it happens year after year, that’s a choice. But on the other side of it, to me rock and roll has always been about doing what you want to do and ignoring not only your critics but also your peers. For 40 years, we’ve rarely wavered from that. So I would have to say that the same criteria that has kept us out of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame is the same criteria that now has gotten us inducted into it."
Paul Stanley, who turned 62 in January, told The Pulse Of Radio that the things that spurred him and KISS to super-stardom still drives the band to carry on. "There's no substitute for the enormous crowds, or the response or the mania that we see and that's directed at us," he said. "There's no substitute for me getting up onstage and having 15,000 people calling my name — y'know, all the accouterment, all the stuff that goes along with it. . .
PAUL STANLEY To Sign Copies Of His Memoir In Los Angeles
KISS frontman Paul Stanley will sign copies of his memoir, "Face The Music: A Life Exposed", on April 16 at Barnes & Noble at The Grove at Farmers Market in Los Angeles, California beginning at 7:00 p.m.
For more information, go to this location.
"Face The Music: A Life Exposed" will be released on April 8 via HarperOne The 432-page hardcover will feature rare photographs of the legendary rocker and detail his hard-partying lifestyle as one of the co-founders of the heavy rock band who has sold over eighty million albums and performed more than two thousand shows around the world.
Stanley explained to The Pulse Of Radio that if his book was going to follow the pattern of some of the other books he's read, he would've passed on writing it all together. "I think I took a tact different than a lot of these books," he said. "Y'know, rock n' roll autobiographies tend to be a love letter — to the author. And they tend to be about how smart and creative and how this person was responsible for the creation of the world. And if that were the tact for the book, I never would've written the book."
In "Face The Music", Stanley talks frankly about his early struggles with hearing — he was born with Level 3 Microtia and is deaf in his right ear. Microtia is a congenital deformity of the cartilage of the outer ear that can affect normal hearing.
Stanley, who grew up half-deaf and scarred with a deformed right ear, explained to The Pulse Of Radio that by touching upon the more difficult episodes in his life, he's not seeking sympathy from the reader, but simply highlighting the path into who he became. "Y'know, my book is about my life starting from the very beginning and certainly a certain amount of adversity and having a birth defect and being deaf on one side and the family that I came from," he said. "Certainly people have had more adversity in their lives — and some less — but I, I would think some people would get a certain amount of inspiration and a sense that positivity and belief in yourself will ultimately lead you to a great place."
During an appearance on the "Sixx Sense" radio show hosted by MÖTLEY CRÜE/SIXX: A.M. bassist Nikki Sixx in November 2012, Stanley, was asked how his book will be different from the other rock and roll autobiographies and whether his book will be "a history lesson in music," Stanley said, "Well, everybody will tell you the same thing: 'Well, my book is brutally honest.' It's a history lesson in music, but it's also a history lesson in somebody taking themselves and making themselves into something they weren't — taking a not-so-great deck of cards and winning at poker. So it's good. I think it's terrific. Especially, it's funny, at this point, with the three other guys from the original lineup having written books. It’s kind of like, 'OK, have you all said your piece? OK? Now let me tell you what happened.'"
Original KISS drummer Peter Criss' memoir, "Makeup To Breakup: My Life In And Out Of Kiss", landed at position No. 7 on the New York Times "Hardcover Nonfiction" best-sellers list. The book arrived in October 2012 via the Simon & Schuster imprint Scribner.
Former KISS guitarist Ace Frehley's book, "No Regrets: A Rock 'N' Roll Memoir", debuted on the New York Times "Hardcover Nonfiction" best sellers list at No. 10. The book, which was described as a look back at Ace's "life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll," arrived on November 1, 2011 via Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
PAUL STANLEY’s Autobiography To Be Released Next Spring
KISS frontman Paul Stanley has confirmed via Twitter that his much-anticipated autobiography will be released next spring.
During an appearance on the "Sixx Sense" radio show hosted by MÖTLEY CRÜE/SIXX: A.M. bassist Nikki Sixx last November, Stanley, 61, was asked if he has read some of the other rock and roll autobiographies out there and whether he has plans to write a book of his own.
"This will come back to haunt me, because, of course, mine is in the works," Stanley said.
"Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself," he continued. "I mean, George Orwell said that the autobiography is the most outrageous form of fiction. How objective can you be when you are writing about yourself.
"I've seen people around me write books and somehow they're always in the center of everything that happened, they were the one who made it happen. There's been a lot of those books that didn't really interest me much. I thought Duff's [McKagan] book was great. I think a book that just says, 'Gee, aren't I the greatest thing?' And 'I was smarter than everyone else.'…"
Paul Stanley: New KISS Album In September
KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley has told Brazil's O Dia Online that the band's new LP will be released in September. (more…)...